List all ALSA devices

Use the pacmd list-sources or pactl list commands to show PulseAudio devices. To show only names you can grep on it's output. This is an example from PulseAudio FAQ

$ LANG=C pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: ' | cut -d" " -f2

With additional grep on ".monitor" you can get only monitor devices.

So in short, it looks like the problem is up at the alsa level and not at the pulseaudio level? If you want to see the alsa devices try.

aplay -l

(but aplay -L which you've already mentioned is similar).

pulseaudio sits on top of alsa. So looking at pactl brings in another layer of software... see here troubleshooters.com/linux/sound/sound_troubleshooting.htm. If alsa can't see the sound device then certainly pulseaudio won't?